_To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine._
I trust your candour will permit me, through the medium of your
excellent publication, shortly to reply to some remarks that were made,
and I think rather hastily, in your last number, relative to the
introduction of instrumental music in dissenting places of worship. Your
correspondent, Mr. Wilkin, I am fearful, was not in the most composed
frame of mind when he sat down to pen the communication alluded to. The
sounds of the instrument which he states to have "greeted" him with its
"hideous tones," must have been vibrating in his ears at the time, or he
could not have expressed sentiments bearing so close an affity to
those _discordant_ notes with which he professes to have been so much
annoyed on his entering some Baptist chapel.
For my own part, I should deem no act inconsistent with the worship of
God, in its simplest and purest form, which has a tendency to create a
unison of voices which must tend so materially to produce a unity of
feeling in the minds of those engaged in one of the most sublime parts
of a religious service. I would only advocate the introduction of
instrumental music into dissenting chapels to assist the singing, not
when it merely offers an opportunity for the display of professional
skill. With regard to the parts of Scripture bearing upon the subject,
there are no direct commands in the New Testament, either for or against
the practice. We read in the Revelations of "the harpers harping with
their harps before the throne of God," while, in the Old Testament, we
also read of praising God on the high-sounding organ. Surely, if praise
was offered to God in this form with acceptance formerly, why shall it
not be so in the present day? Some of the Psalms have titles signifying
the author who was to set them to music, while others indicate the
instrument it was to be played upon; clearly denoting that the
accompaniment of music, when directed to God with pious feeling and
sincerity of purpose, cannot be unacceptable, and consequently not
inconsistent with the worship of the Divine Being; so that, so far from
its being a departure from Scripture, it appears to me to be an
adherence to it. Your correspondent states that, if he is wrong, he is
open to correction. I trust, also, he is open to conviction, and
sincerely hope he will not let early prejudices bias his mind to that
extent as to pervert his judgment, or gain the ascendancy of his nobler
and better feelings.